"bend studio" Posts

As we get closer to the launch of PS Vita and UNCHARTED: Golden Abyss, the team at Bend Studios is getting amped! We’ve been working on this game for a long, long time, from early brainstorming sessions on the PS Vita beginning in 2008, through the production phase that wrapped up at the end of 2011. When given the opportunity to create a launch title for PlayStation’s new next-gen handheld, we jumped at the chance. When asked what game we’d like to make, we said UNCHARTED! Here’s why.

From the beginning, our goal was to create a great UNCHARTED game. We wanted to give players, including ourselves, more of what they love, but with the PS Vita’s unique spin. The cinematic experience, the gunplay and weapons, the compelling story and characters, the mystery and treasure hunting based on real history, the puzzles, the platforming, and of course, the colorful and detailed imagery… it’s all there. But it’s on a gorgeous five-inch screen that you can take with you.

Learning how to bring characters to life with all the nuances of personality, habits, quirks and mannerisms was really Sony Bend’s first and most important job when we started to work on Uncharted: Golden Abyss. We have an awesome example in the Uncharted series, and we wanted to give the characters a level of depth that transcends the screen. These videos shows just a glimpse of our process and how we worked with our eclectic cast of characters.

I’m no stranger to writing, having written all the Syphon Filter games, but this title taught me some new tricks. By the time we started shooting in February 2011, I had gone through over 40 revisions, changing everything from setting, characters, names, dialogue and action. If we count all the in-game VO dialogue, we ended up with over 400 pages of script for Uncharted: Golden Abyss.

Earlier this week we held a massive PlayStation Vita event in San Francisco, rife with new games, first hands-on time, and newly-debuted features. The Sony Bend Studios team working on Uncharted: Golden Abyss rolled into town touting something in that last category – the Vita-specific Intu-Aim feature. This “aiming modifier” allows gamers to combine the six-axis gyro features of the Vita to fine tune the shots you line up with the right analog stick for greater precision.

Hi everyone! I’m the the writer and director of UNCHARTED: Golden Abyss. We’ve just released a trailer that introduces a new and important character from our story. You met Jason Dante in our E3 demo and learned a little bit about him: that he and Drake have known each other a long time, that they each know Sully, that Drake taught Dante a lot about treasure hunting, that Dante can be a little, well, greedy.

This time we’re introducing Marisa Chase. But as she tells Drake at one point, call her “Chase,” only her grandfather calls her “Marisa.” I don’t want to give too much away at this point, but I can say this: once again Nathan Drake finds himself on a quest to solve a historical mystery which he hopes will lead to a fantastic treasure. The trick is staying alive long enough to get there. No easy task. And when Drake gets between Dante and Chase, events quickly spiral out of control.

Until very recently, only a handful of people outside of Sony had ever laid their hands on an NGP unit. People would ask me what I thought about the upcoming handheld, and I’d have to reply with: “It looks really good.” I hadn’t had the chance to play it either.

That’s why we invited the cream of the gaming press crop onto a Sony Pictures soundstage in LA, where they (and we) could finally spend hours experiencing some of the titles that will comprise the NGP’s diverse launch lineup. Straight off, Shuhei Yoshida, President of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios, made it clear what the day was all about:

“We’ll talk more about social connectivity features down the line – today is about showing off the core games and getting you hands-on time. I’m sure you have burning questions on launch date, pricing, 3G data plans, and we’ll be very happy to share all those with you moving forward.”

Hey everyone, I’m John Garvin, creative director at Bend Studio. I’m excited to announce that Syphon Filter: Logan’s Shadow will be available for purchase on the PlayStation 2 on June 1! Originally released on the PSP in 2007, we were very pleased that game critics and press recognized all the hard work the team put […]